


Butterfly Effect

by miramei



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Heirarchy of pureblood society, Immediately after so that pain is fresh, Kill The Spare, Post-Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Pureblood Politics (Harry Potter), Pureblood Society (Harry Potter), Slytherin ladies seeing a threat to their families and going NO THANK YOU, kind of like the ranks of peerage I guess?, teatime gossip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-19
Updated: 2020-06-19
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:09:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24801376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miramei/pseuds/miramei
Summary: Cedric Diggory is murdered, and it doesn’t take long for the phrase “kill to spare” to make its rounds through the social circles. Cassius Warrington’s Aunt Esther is furious, and she’s not the only one.OR: three little words, and the pureblooded ladies who don’t like what they see past them. War is a thing waged as much on the front lines as it is in private tea salons, and no self-respecting Slytherin-educated lady is above manipulating gossip if it will protect all that is hers.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 70





	Butterfly Effect

**Author's Note:**

> This work is built on the premise of the Diggory family being a smaller pureblood family in terms of social influence, following the idea that wizarding pureblood society has layers/hierarchies of influence that loosely mirrors the English peerage system, which is absolutely nuts.
> 
> Also some interhouse mingling mentioned because I HATE the silo'd Slytherin bubble concept.

Regardless of what the rumor mill liked to churn out on an almost daily basis, Cassius Warrington and Cedric Diggory had a surprisingly amicable relationship outside of actual Quidditch matches. They’re both captains for their respective teams, following Marcus Flint’s successful graduation the year before, and all’s fine and well when they cross each other’s paths between classes or find themselves arguing tactics after practice matches. They share several N.E.W.T. periods together, so weirdly enough they end up partnering for class practicals more often than not, much to the displeasure of the girls in said classes. Diggory’s an alright bloke, Cassius thinks—stupidly honest and almost annoying in his advocacy for fairness like a true Puff but with far more tact than the rest of his housemates. Very privately, he can even admit that he found the other boy’s humor and wit amusing, and that he’s got a far better handle on Herbology than Cassius does.

That’s why Cassius is finding it so hard to process the fact that Diggory is _dead_. They no longer have a surprisingly amicable relationship outside of matches—instead, they had _had_ one, before Potter had exploded out of the maze screaming. Diggory _was_ an alright bloke who _was_ stupidly into the Puff ideology of fairness, but he also hadn’t been above bargaining for assistance in Arithmancy in return for looking over Cassius’s Herbology essays, y’know, back when he was still alive and still taking N.E.W.T.-level Arithmancy and Herbology with Cassius.

Back when N.E.W.T.-level classes still mattered, because they sure as hell didn’t feel like they mattered _now_ , twenty-four hours after the conclusion of that blasted Triwizards Tournament.

Cassius lets out a frustrated yell, hurling his well-worn copy of _Charms of Defense and Deterrence_ to the end of his bed. It’s barely bounced once before he’s scrambling after it because it was his Aunt Esther’s copy and while he hadn’t _begged_ for it, per se, it had been a damn near thing. The neat little annotations in the margins have saved him time and time again, starting from the beginning of his O.W.L. revisions all the way up through now.

“You alright there, Warrington?” comes a tentative voice from Bletchley, who has the bed right next to his. Cassius looks up at his teammate with a scowl, hands desperately trying to smooth a few crinkled pages of his textbook.

“Fucking peachy,” he snarls. Bletchley gives him a disbelieving look, but he still tosses a few cubes of brightly wrapped chocolates over, and okay, that’s pretty kind and thoughtful of him.

“Thanks,” Cassius mutters, unwrapping a chocolate and popping it into his mouth as the other boy turns back to his packing. Bletchley, bless his heart, just nods and staunchly doesn’t bring it up again.

The school gossips are shocked for all of ten hours following Diggory’s death before they start whispering again like the menaces that they are. It starts, predictably, in the younger Gryffindors, in part because Gryffindors can’t keep a secret to save their bloody lives and also because tact is a concept that doesn’t just fly over their heads, it leaps straight past them and into the moon. As a general rule, any gossip surrounding Potter tends to reach the ears of those on the Slytherin Quidditch team with startling speed thanks to Malfoy’s unfailing ability to whinge about his self-proclaimed arch-nemesis for hours on end. This time though, Malfoy is quiet, and Cassius instead hears the rumors while he’s storming his way to the Great Hall to grab a quick lunch. The whispered words that he can catch—things like _graveyard_ and _last words_ and _spare_ —are concerning enough that he draws to an immediate halt just behind a suit of armor. A small gaggle of younger students—two Gryffindors and one Ravenclaw—scurry past him, too immersed in their hushed murmurings to notice him lurking in a shadow that’s far too small to hide his bulk. Gut churning, no longer wishing for a sandwich, Cassius turns sharply on his heel and goes on the hunt for Potter.

Potter is surprisingly easy to find, alone save for his usual crew of Granger and Weasley. Weasley’s face sours immediately upon seeing Cassius stride up the steps to the castle battlements. “What’d you want, Warrington?” the younger boy asks snippily. Cassius gives him a cool look, the kind that Aunt Esther uses to great effect when she’s confronted with things that are beneath her but that she’s not willing to pick a fight over.

“Save it, Weasley,” Cassius says. “I’m just here to confirm one thing, and then I’ll gladly get out of your hair.” He got enough attitude on a daily basis from Malfoy, so he had absolutely no interest in further torturing himself with the dramatics of a fourth-year Gryffindor on what would otherwise be a beautiful June day.

Potter sighs, drooping over the stone battlements before straightening up. “Look,” he says, and Cassius studies him carefully. Potter looks exasperated, but more importantly he looks exhausted. “If you’re just here to ask about what happened, then you can save your breath. I’m not about to give a play-by-play account on the exact details of how Cedric got _murdered_ for anyone’s entertainment—”

“Good,” Cassius snaps, effectively cutting Potter off as the boy’s voice got louder and louder, “because I’m already not entertained, so that’d be the last thing to put me in a jolly good mood. I need to know what was said about Diggory being a spare.”

He sneers at the flabbergasted looks the three Gryffindors are giving him. “Oh, don’t bother looking so thunderstruck. This school’s gossip mill is merciless. Just tell me what I want to know and I’ll be on my merry way.”

Potter squints at him suspiciously. “What’s it to you?” he asks.

Cassius sucks in a deep breath, eyes cast towards the sky as though imploring a higher power for patience. He thinks of rainy days poring over numbers to find where Diggory had messed up his calculation, followed by the unhappy scratching of his quill when Diggory says, _“You wrote this entire section on the wrong plant.”_ Or those times back when they were shockingly tiny first years, listing dangerously to the left on their stuttering school broomsticks. Or how in third year, they’d made themselves into general nuisances for the remedial flying class students because they were trying so desperately to gain the skills they’d need to finally make the cut onto their House teams.

And even before that, there had been the evenings where Cassius’s mother had drawn him to her in their drawing room, where she’d cracked open a staggeringly enormous tome on genealogy and traced their family name back generation after generation. There’s summer days where Cassius wasn’t allowed out to play until his tutors were suitably satisfied that he knew at least three generations worth of history from all the pureblooded families that were of equal social standing to theirs. To this day, he can probably still perfectly recite how and when and why the Diggory family started to fall into decline, and how three strategic marriages, the most recent being that of Katrina Maxwell to Amos Diggory, had saved the Diggory family from falling further down the social hierarchy.

“Everything,” he answers, because it’s the truth. He didn’t spend a stupidly large portion of his childhood learning about the pureblooded families of his rank only to now face the possibility that Cedric Diggory, only son of the Diggory family, had been written off as a _spare_. Cassius doesn’t know which would make him happier—for the rumors to just be embellished rumors, whispered into curious ears to keep bolstering Potter as the famed Boy Who Lived; or for the rumors to be true, pointing to the very real possibility that some madman’s out there preaching the importance of pure blood yet disposing of them with but a trite word.

A _spare_ , he thinks bitterly. Aunt Esther would have kittens if she heard.

Potter searches his face for something—maybe something mean-spirited—anything that’ll make Cassius fit back into the neat little box that Malfoy seems to insist on boxing all Slytherins into. Potter looks at Cassius as if he expects Cassius to be black sludge merely molded into the shape of a boy. But he either doesn’t find it, or he isn’t very invested in trying to find something where it’s not, because his lips move. His voice is so small but the words still manage to cut like a knife.

“Kill the spare,” Potter says, looking haunted, “and then he was dead.”

Cassius makes it through a solid two weeks of summer holidays before he finally cracks. Not even fast laps through the trees on their estate can shrug off the restless energy that sits deep in his bones. Eventually, his parents can’t stand him pacing and pacing and pacing, so they boot him out to his Uncle Morris’s. It’s perfect. He’d been meaning to talk to Aunt Esther anyway but nothing he had managed to write onto parchment in the past two weeks had sounded right. He’d accidentally driven their house elf to tears when the elf had popped in to clean and noticed the two new ink stains on the incredibly expensive and previously pristine carpet.

He stumbles through the Floo as fast as humanly possible, coughing up dust. An overexcited crup nearly tackles him right back into the fireplace. He doesn’t topple into the grate, but he does hit the ground hard just in front of it, and it _hurts._ He can hear the slap of footsteps over the crup’s excited panting, and shortly thereafter his tiny cousin charges into the room. He grins, nudging the dog aside so that he can open his arms wide for the toddler to leap in. Noelle squeals in excitement as he catches her easily, snuggling into his shoulder with not a care in the world for the smudge of soot that she smears over her little cheek. The house elf that he calls over though, takes offense enough for all three of them.

“Young Master Cassius ought learn to Floo without making a mess,” the elf sniffs, whipping a feather duster out of seemingly nowhere. Noelle giggles behind pudgy little toddler hands as Cassius is subjected to a thorough dust-down. Cassius gives her a lopsided grin before closing his eyes just in time to avoid being poked in the eye with a stray feather.

“Sorry, Itsy, but could you entertain Noelle for a little while longer?” he asks, standing up after he’s finally been deemed clean. “I need to speak to Aunt Esther.”

“Itsy is always entertaining her Littlest Lady Noelle,” Itsy says imperiously, snapping her spindly fingers and sending all the dirt Cassius had scattered onto the flagstones into the ether. “Mistress is in the garden, having private tea with Ladies Lucille and Aria.” The elf gives him a baleful glare as he nods and heads off, but otherwise says nothing more.

His aunt and her guests are seated underneath a trellis of roses, a delicate tea service spread on the garden table between the three of them. Cassius slows his purposeful stride minutely to straighten himself out, tugging at his sleeves. It’s a futile effort though—he sticks out like a sore thumb amidst the delicate blooms, so the three witches see him almost immediately. Aunt Esther arches a perfectly made-up brow, but otherwise only primly sets her teacup down and holds out her hand. Cassius drops a kiss onto it obediently, straightening up with polite nods to the other ladies.

“I apologize for the sudden visit, Aunt Esther,” he says, “And I know that it’s terribly rude to interrupt when you have guests, but I have something urgent that I wanted to discuss with you.” His aunt is unique among his relatives in that she genuinely doesn’t care when her nieces or nephews drop in, but Cassius’s mother will still have his hide if he doesn’t go through even the most perfunctory of niceties. But, as expected, Aunt Esther is unbothered, and simply summons another chair for him to drop into.

“We don’t mind, do we, ladies?” she asks, turning to her guests, who both shake their heads. Teacakes appear on his plate, and the pot levitates itself so that it can pour out a cup. He drops in two sugar cubes and a dash of milk.

Aria is the one who speaks first, which is honestly a real stressful way of opening this conversation. She’s a Reier by birth, so he needs to be mindful of how he answers. Despite marrying poorly, she still has good relations with her brother, who was the department head of Advanced Spell Damage as well as a member of the Hogwarts Board of Governors. If he inadvertently offends Augustine Reier by insulting his sister, Cassius will never hear the end of it from his father (at best). But most importantly, Aunt Esther will eat him alive if he insults her best friend, accident or no, and Aunt Esther is by far the scarier option. He almost wishes it had been Lucille—born an Abbott, married into the Wood family—who had spoken first, because there’s far less at risk there. He takes as large of a swallow of tea as politely possible.

“How are you holding up, Cassius?” is what she asks, expression neutral but eyes sharp. “Essie says that you and the Diggory boy got along well enough. It was a terrible shock, hearing what happened to him. He left quite an impression when I spoke to him at the career fair last year.”

Lucille shakes her head. “His poor mother,” she says mournfully. “I fear she’ll waste away from grief. If only a Seer could have Seen such a tragedy.”

Cassius swallows thickly. “About that,” he starts, hands suddenly clammy around his cup as he instantly gets all the witches’ attentions. “Diggory’s death. It wasn’t—I mean—it was _tragic_ —certainly—but it wasn’t an accident.”

Aunt Esther is silent for a very long time. “Cassius,” she says finally, “The Tournament’s notoriety aside, it is a heavy accusation to suggest that there was foul play before the likes of wizards such as Dumbledore and Moody, or even Karkaroff. I trust that you have proof to back it up.”

“Something was said to him, before he died.”

The witches share a look between them. Cassius glowers at his reflection in the amber liquid in his cup, stalling for time. It takes him several embarrassingly long minutes to finally confess the three little words that had plagued him for the past two weeks. Aunt Esther’s expression shutters immediately, before the shock is blown away by the rising fury in her eyes, turning the grey into storm. “You are sure?” she asks, her voice stony. Cassius nods.

“I have already confirmed it with Potter.”

Aunt Esther sucks in a sharp breath. “Harry Potter,” she breathes out. “Truly, he deserves the moniker of the Boy Who Lived.” She reaches across the small table and squeezes one of Cassius’s hands.

“Listen well, my nephew,” she says, pinning him into his seat with the intensity of her gaze. “If you must remember one thing—just one—from all that your mother has taught you, it must be this: no one, _no one_ , is allowed to stand before you and call you a _spare_. You are the firstborn son of the pureblooded Warrington family. You are not to be squashed into the dirt like something that is dispensable. Anyone who says otherwise is not worthy of your attention. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Aunt Esther.”

She smiles. The action instantly softens her face, starting from the corners of her eyes and traveling down to the dimples in her cheeks and the stretch of her lips. “Good,” she says, patting his hand. “Now, Noelle has been eagerly looking forward to her favorite cousin teaching her how to properly ride a broom. Won’t you be a dear and show her? It’s such a lovely day for flying.”

“Of course, Aunt Esther,” Cassius says easily, recognizing the dismissal. “Thank you for inviting me to tea. Mrs. Wood; Mrs. Upton; I hope you have a lovely afternoon.” He bows to all three in turn, then strides into the house. When he turns to glance back out into the garden from the relative safety of the door’s threshold, it’s to find them with their heads bent together, whispering urgently, postures tense and expressions severe.

Three days later, he’s back at his aunt’s house, sprinting across the grounds to chase after Noelle. No toddler has any business being that fast on a toy broomstick, but Noelle leaves Cassius and the family crup in the dust in no time. By the time Noelle finally allows them to go back into the house, he’s sweaty and exhausted but happy. Itsy whisks her away for a bath and a nap with the snap of a finger, and then Cassius suddenly finds himself left to his own devices.

Aunt Esther holds formal teas in the east wing, in a set of beautiful sun-drenched rooms that open out into a little fountain courtyard, decorated with water lilies and surrounded by hydrangeas. Cassius knows better than to barge in on one of _those_ teas, but he has to slip past the curtained French doors to get to the study with the squashiest chairs. If he has the timetable correct, there should be a Ballycastle Bats game coming on soon. He’s looking forward to listening to the match while nursing a cold glass of butterbeer. Raised voices in his aunt’s tearoom, though, quickly derail him.

“That is but a _rumor_!” a lady cries. Cassius flattens himself against the wall so that he can listen in, because all the etiquette lessons in the world can’t stop him from being a nosy teenager. What his mother doesn’t know won’t kill her.

“Does it matter?” another snipes back. “It is concerning enough to even _think_ of those words being said about another pureblooded boy!”

“It is but the Diggory family—”

“Dahlia!” Oh, Cassius thinks, that’s his mother being cross with his Aunt Dahlia. He presses himself more firmly into the wallpaper, as if his mother would storm out any minute now after finally having lost her cool with her snippety Parkinson cousin-in-law. “Amos Diggory’s unfortunate eccentricities aside, the Diggorys are _pure_. That Cedric could have finally finished generations of hard work and lifted the family back to where it once was after he left school—goodness knows he had the talent and the drive!”

“What happened to that boy was tragic enough already. Must you try to twist it any further?”

“Tell me, Plumeria,” comes an acidic voice. “If a tragic accident befell your own children and you heard later that there was a rumor that they were called a _spare_ just prior, would that not concern you?”

“And what fool would dare call a Yaxley child a spare?”

“One that thinks that they can get away with it.” Aunt Esther’s voice is like ice. “Listen to yourself: he is but a Diggory; he is pure but he is inconsequential; his mother does not frequent the right circles. What, pray tell, would be the right circle for Katrina Diggory to move in, if not the one where my Warrington family moves, or the Higgs, or the Reiers, or even the Woods? And as I am only a Warrington by marriage, but a Flint by birth, I still move in your circles too, Plumeria. Will you only care if the dead are named Crabbe or Flint or Rosier, knowing full well that _our_ daughters have given _your_ lines fresh blood time and time again?”

“It’s these Muggle-borns,” sniffs a new voice. “They sweep in and demand things left and right, chipping away at our society and our values, filling you with poisonous thoughts. My husband says the Dark Lord has returned, and that we’ll finally have a society that we’d be proud to leave to our children.”

“Such honeyed words,” Aunt Esther spits. “Perhaps your Dark Lord has poor eyesight, then? Surely the spare should have been the Potter boy; as I recall, his mother was Muggle-born.”

“That is—”

“An unfortunate miss?”

Plumeria’s haughty voice floats out the room. “You’d best watch your tone, Esther. Think of your daughter. What of your nephews? Do you want to brand your family as blood traitors and ruin them all?”

Aunt Esther scoffs. “Is that how we define that term these days? Am I no longer allowed as a mother and an aunt to worry for the well being of the children in my family? My nephews are now both fine pureblooded men. They are the firstborn sons of their generations.”

“Yes, and you must be very proud—”

“My nephews will not lower themselves to be called _spares_ by any man, wizard, warlock, or being,” Aunt Esther says shortly. “That you imply even the possibility of such to happen—that this is now some inherent prerequisite to being the good modern pureblooded wizard—is laughable. It is an insult not just to me, but to my sisters-in-laws.” Cassius can imagine her, standing at the head of the table, posture picture-perfect and Flint poise sharp enough to slice you open. It’s terrifying. It’s even more terrifying to think that there are women in that room who would have dared to challenge her.

Something rattles in the room, like someone had set down a teacup with a bit too much force. “My nephews are not spares. I should certainly hope that yours aren’t, either. Your sons, your daughters—they too, are _more_. You are raising them as proud purebloods, not common chattel.”

There’s the screech of a chair being pushed out forcibly. Aunt Esther’s voice turns soft, dangerous. “Do you not love your son, Larissa? Does he not carry the pride of the Goyle name?”

“He is my only son,” answers a wavering voice. “He is our heir. Of course I am proud.”

Cassius can practically hear the smile in his aunt’s voice. “Do remember that, Larissa. If your lord husband is to be believed, and his precious Dark Lord truly has arose, do remember those three words that he left for the Diggory boy. I pray that, should there be a next time, he doesn’t hit the wrong boy. There are no spares in my family. I pray that there are none in yours, too.”

**Author's Note:**

> The acceptable pureblood definition of a "spare": your second son, because wizarding life is dangerous enough in the best of times and your house needs an heir else it all goes to an incompetent extended relative who doesn't need to bring your estate to ruin.
> 
> The unacceptable pureblood definition of a "spare": your son is between Tom Riddle and Harry Potter and therefore in the way and expendable.
> 
> I don't believe for a second that Narcissa Malfoy and ladies in other hard-stance families aren't scrambling after Cedric Diggory's death to contain any potential damages a rumor like "kill the spare" can wreck. These girls live to play the social game and read between the lines. And they're all stubborn because they've been raised full of pride so I doubt they'd all just collectively roll over and make it easy for Narcissa to just smooth things over. If anyone knows how easily a few words can make or break campaigns, it's going to be these ladies, and you better bet they're doing everything they can to swing favor in inconsequential little afternoon tea events where they end up touching a representative of nearly every pureblood family that "matters"
> 
> This is basically just a long-winded way to say that I am still bitter about Slytherins and the Battle of Hogwarts.


End file.
